AMATEUR Radio was formed by experiment-ers who wished to push the envelope of radio technology. That
purpose remains at its core, which is why it fits perfectly with science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education.
Also known as ham radio, its emphasis on hands-on investigation and experimentation make it a per-fect tool to help students understand complex technical subjects. It also aligns with both state and national learning objectives. Moreover, in-corporating Amateur Radio in the classroom is a proven effective way to teach both practical applications and theory.
Using wireless technology literacy as a starting point, instructors can build a solid foundation across multi-ple subject matters and grade levels as Amateur Radio integrates math, science, engineering, and technology, as well as other content areas, such as geography, reading, and writing. As both a teaching tool and as a hobby, it has demonstrated a strong motivating influence, one that readily leads to careers in computer scienc-es, consumer electronics, broadcast engineering, research sciences, medi-
Amateur Radio in the STEM ClassroomOne Technical Tool—Countless Lesson Applications
cine, telecommunications, and more. Beyond that, it encourages com-
munity involvement, while cutting across social, political, cultural, geographic, and physical handicap boundaries, contributing to the goal of sending forth truly educated graduates.
This article provides a sampling of how Amateur Radio is being used successfully in the classroom by teachers who attended professional development workshops offered by the Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL), a non-profit, national associ-ation that supports STEM instruction through its Education & Technology Program (ETP).
The workshops, known as Teach-ers Institute on Wireless Technology TI-1 (beginner) and Teachers Insti-tute on Remote Sensing and Data Gathering TI-2 (advanced), provide educators with equipment, training, and resources to incorporate radio science and wireless technology in their instruction. The sidebar
“Amateur Radio in Brief” provides a short introduction to the topic and resources for more information, including the Teachers Institute on Wireless Technology Summer 2016 workshops.
Building Circuits, Tracking Satellites, Bouncing Signals Off the Atmosphere
The broad range of Amateur Ra-dio applications that can be used to achieve educational goals is ex-emplified at Liberal Arts & Science Academy (LASA) High School in Austin, Texas. Here, government/law instructor and Amateur Radio opera-tor Ron Risinger, KC5EES, used TI-1
training and an ETP equipment grant as a springboard to form Amateur Radio school club K5LBJ. From that initial step, he developed a complete course based on wireless technolo-gies.
His students learn basic electron-ics and are guided in building crystal radios, Morse code oscillators, and
*Licensed Amateur Radio opera-tors, some clubs, and special stations are assigned a combination of letters and numbers, known as a call sign.
Edith Lennon, N2ZRW, is a free-lance journalist and Amateur Radio operator.
Photo 1—Liberal Arts & Science Academy (LASA) High School student Brian Cui, KF5SZS, examining a “Blinky LED” circuit
“Blinky LED” circuits (Photo 1). Oth-er lessons build on his TI experience in constructing and controlling a Par-allax BASIC Stamp BOE-Bot (short for Board of Education robot), an ideal platform for introducing robotics and programming.
Earth sciences came into focus after the installation of a weatherfax receiver that broadcasts graphic weather maps and other graphics via HF radio for daily weather images direct from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellites. Students soon decided to put a computer monitor on top of the hallway lockers to display the weather images showing current conditions as directly received from the satellite.
Leaving the Earth’s atmosphere
behind for a once-in-a-lifetime experience, Risinger arranged with the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) program for his school to host a live radio con-tact with the ISS.
Units on remote sensing and data gathering—which introduce basic sensors, analog/digital conversion, and using APRS (Automatic Position
Reporting System) to convey location and other data messag-es—also involve tools taken from Amateur Radio. A particularly interesting one is known as the Mars Amateur Radio Exploration Activity (MAREA). For this activ-ity, students will use a robot plat-form and a satellite-tracking sta-tion they built to send APRS mes-sages containing commands via the ISS, simulating NASA’s control of its own Curiosity rover via the Mars Global Surveyor satellite.
While there was an initial set-back (a 9 V battery on the robot died while awaiting signals), students have spoken with other hams via satellite (SO-50) and sent “tweets” via the ISS as proof of concept, and a new group is excited to try again.
Until then, the class is enjoying moni-toring the FUNCube (AO-73) educa-tional satellite’s various telemetry and messages and learning about its orbit/rotation (Photo 2, Fig. 1).
Risinger says that wireless tech-nology has had a lasting impact on his classroom. Radio club K5LBJ’s president Lucas Baltisberger, KG5GHP (Photo 3), who is pres-
ently building an 80 meter receiver, agrees. “Ham radio shows you a whole new world of electronics and communications that I really never knew about,” says Lucas. “In Phys-ics, you get a basic introduction to concepts such as Ohm’s Law, but in ham radio, you really learn about components and circuits, and get to see how it all works together to receive a signal.”
Lesson Takes Off with Weather Balloon Tracking
At the STEM School and Academy, which serves 5th- through 12th-grade students in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, volunteer Academy in-structor Paul Veal, NØAH, teaches wireless technology applications and offers after-school enrichment programs. To engage students, he fo-cuses on how their wireless devices work using RF energy, concepts eas-ily demonstrated through Amateur Radio equipment and project-based learning. Working as teams, they built a ham station and contacted people around the world. Some took it a step further and learned how to not only hook up antennas, but to design and build them using antenna analyzers.
These activities led to the forma-tion of a school radio club, which soon began networking with other area clubs and Edge of Space Sci- ences (EOSS), a Denver, Colorado-based non-profit that promotes sci-ence and education through Amateur Radio and high-altitude balloons. Edge of Space refers to the area of
Fig. 1—Screenshot of first FUNCube (AO-73) telemetry received by K5LBJ, May 2015
Photo 2— LASA Ama-teur Radio
Club, K5LBJ, students in front of the
satellite-tracking
computer as FUNCube passes over
their high school
Photo 3—K5LBJ president Lucas Baltisberger, KG5GHP, with his 80 meter
the stratosphere where high-altitude balloons (weather balloons), filled with either hydrogen or helium, can fly. They typically reach a height of approximately 100,000', where the atmosphere is comparable to that of Mars. Of course, the students were thrilled to launch their own weather balloon (Photo 4).
Through designing and construct-ing experiments, or payloads (Photo 5), lessons cut across curricula and incorporate math, science, engineer-ing, and of course, Amateur Radio tactics used to track the balloons. Payloads may have as many as a dozen experiments tied to a cord up to 60' long hanging from the balloon. They must be capable of surviving the extreme environment (including temperatures as low as –70° F) and the parachute descent back down after the expanding gas causes the balloon to burst. The objective is to have the experiments return to Earth intact with retrievable data.
To retrieve the balloon’s payloads, students use Amateur Radio tracking
equipment and techniques, including Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS), a digital communications information channel for ham radio. “APRS sends out bursts of informa-tion on Amateur Radio VHF bands, telling us exactly where the balloon is, its speed, altitude, and upon land-ing, its precise location,” says Veal. “For backup, we also have on-board Amateur Radio beacons so, should the APRS fail, we can locate the bal-loon by triangulating on the signal the beacon puts out” (Photo 6).
The goal for the program, about to launch its fifth high-altitude balloon, is to improve upon the last design, while engineering new ideas and concepts. “The best success we have had is reaching apogee with our experi-ments still function-ing,” says Veal. “Our GoPro cameras have captured amazing footage of the actual
balloon burst, clear shots of the moon, and occasional dust particles” (Photo 7).
Columbia College Delves Deeper with Buoys
Jeff Tolhurst, N6JWT, teaches Earth Sciences and GIS (Geographic Information Systems)/GPS at Colum-bia College in Sonora, California. Last semester, he introduced students to the Buoy Sensor System he obtained from the ARRL TI-2 course. The les-son began with them observing its
parts and describing how the system collects air and water temperature, air pressure, battery voltage, and GPS location informa-tion.
After deciding on the best location for the buoy, the class paddled out onto the San Diego Reservoir,
Photo 6 (above)—Sophomore and Amateur Radio operator Anna Veal, WØANT, speaks with other hams via a field radio as their convoy tracks an EOSS flight.
Photo 7 (right)—Image taken with EOSS payload’s GoPro
camera at around 95,000' on descent
Photo 4 (right)—STEM School and Academy
students and others watch their weather balloon take
off.
Photo 5 (below)—Payload designed to study sound propagation during EOSS balloon flight
a four-acre body of water on the campus that’s used for field studies. There they deployed the buoy to col-lect that same data themselves (Pho-to 8). In addition to the buoy sensor package, lesson equipment consisted of an APRS 2 meter Amateur Radio and digital repeater system known as aprs.fi, a Web database that provides APRS information and offers real-time map views.
Students monitored the system to see when the batteries ran out of power, which was approximately three weeks. They then downloaded the data the various sensors had col-lected. “During that time, I showed the class how the data was broad-cast to the aprs.fi website, then pro-cessed and cleaned up for analysis,” says Tolhurst. “Students then ana-lyzed the data using Excel spread-sheets and graphing functions” (Fig. 2). This helped them visualize how air and water temperature change at different rates and understand why water holds heat differently than air.
Tolhurst says the big takeaway for students seemed to be an under-standing that sensors and radios are an integral part of observing Earth systems and that they are now cheap enough to deploy almost anywhere and can help us make sense of na-ture. “It’s nice to utilize technology like a scientist would in the field,” said Brian Beasley, a Columbia Col-lege Physical Geology student.
Branching Out—Added Value for Students, Greater ROI for Institutions
Amateur Radio readily lends itself to cross-subject learning, extra-curricular activities (all but mandatory for college admissions), and career-oriented learning. At the Petal High School Career Tech Cen-ter in Petal, Mississippi, Information Technology Instructor Brad Amacker, N , has made in-dustry certifications a primary focus in his IT classes. Even the state end-of-course exams for his InfoTech I and InfoTech 2 programs are IT industry-certification exams. He incorporates wireless technology into his lessons on electricity and electronics, safety, Ohm’s Law, and wireless networking. His students often leave the program not only with IT certifica-tions, but also an FCC Amateur Radio license.
The school Amateur Radio licensing pro-gram he instituted soon expanded into a Law
& Public Safety course, which intro-duces students to the fields of law enforcement, firefighting, and emer-gency medical services and includes a communications unit with a focus on licensing. As the result of teaching his four sections, 35 students re-ceived their Amateur Radio licenses in the fall of 2015 alone.
“Not only do we work to get students licensed, we also want to
have them actively involved in the Amateur Radio community,” says Amacker. The school club provides safety and logistics communications for several area 5K runs. “The local organizations get quality communica-tions and our students get practice in providing public service communica-tions,” he says (Photo 9).
Photo 9—Petal High School student and Amateur Radio operator John Brady Amacker,
K5JBA, providing communications for a 5K race sponsored by the Petal YMCA
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Fig. 2—Screenshot
of San Diego Reservoir
Buoy Data
Photo 8 (above)—Columbia College Physical Geology students paddle out to the buoy deployment site on the San Diego Reservoir.
Several area hams purchased a repeater (an electronic device that receives weak radio signals and retransmits them at a higher pow-er) and installed it atop the high school stadium press box. “We use the repeater for many activities, including communications among licensed second-year IT students who travel between campuses in the district to perform maintenance and repair on computer equipment as part of the job shadowing com-
ponent of the program,” he says. Amacker sums up his experience
as follows:“Career & Technical Education
has always stressed real-world, authentic learning experiences and focuses particularly on building skills to help students succeed in the workplace. Earning validation of these skills, such as industry certi-fications and FCC licenses, not only teaches the skills students need, but provides verification that can help
set them apart from other applicants. The Amateur Radio curriculum has brought tremendous value to these programs, not only affording the opportunity to earn the license, but by strengthening other content areas with practical applications.”
Author’s note: The author wishes to thank Ronny Risinger, KC5EES, Paul Veal NØAH, Jeff Tolhurst, N6JWT, and Brad Amacker, N5MZ, for their invalu-able contributions to this article.
The FCC established Amateur Radio as a voluntary, non-com-mercial radio communications service. It allows licensed opera-tors to improve their communica-tions and technical skills, while providing the nation with a pool of trained radio operators and tech-nicians who can offer essential communications during emergen-cies.
Twenty-seven frequency bands throughout the spectrum are allocated to this service interna-tionally and are used by Amateur
Reprint courtesy of techdirections, a free magazine for educators in the career-technical education and STEM fields. To subscribe, please visit www.techdirections.com/subscribe.html.
Radio operators for self-training, intercommunication, and techni-cal investigations. Some 1,300 digital, analog, pulse, and spread-spectrum emission types may be transmitted.
In the classroom, applying the technologies and techniques of Amateur Radio is an ideal way to promote STEM education experi-ences in a way that prioritizes hands-on learning and fosters student engagement and achieve-ment.
To learn more about Amateur
Radio and how to get started us-ing this tool in the classroom, see the following resources:
American Radio Relay League (ARRL)—www.arrl.org
Amateur Radio in the Classroom —www.arrl.org/amateur-radio-in-the-classroom
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